Well, if you're in Northwestern, CT this afternoon, tune into 91.9 WHDD-FM radio at 2:00 to to hear my interview with author Dani Shapiro (Black & White, Family History, Slow Motion). Or, once it airs, you can click on the link above, or on my home page here on my website and listen to it any time. Dani has an original letter written by Sylvia Plath just a month before she committed suicide, and Dani reads it aloud during the interview. She's fascinating - Dani, I mean, and she has a lovely voice - so tune in!

I am terribly sorry that you've been unable to hear my IN HOUSE radio interview
with author Dani Shapiro, as there has been a problem with the link to the radio site. Problem should be resolved today. If you live in Northwestern CT, you might have heard it as it was broadcast on Saturday, but otherwise you should be able to hear it here soon.

In the meantime, we have arrived at our vacation home. It's not really our home. We rent it. But I LOVE it here and have spent the past 24 hours trying to think of ways that we could live here. It's just my favorite house in the world. It's been owned by the same family, I think, since they stepped off the Mayflower and paddled out to this lovely island (they seem like sturdy stock, these owners, if they bear any resemblance to their cousins who live next door.) We could never afford to buy this house, but nonetheless, I have been fantasizing about all sorts of way that I could come to own it. I could seduce the owner, I suppose, and marry into the property, but then I'd have to give up him:

He looks so nice with a tan, maybe the owner would marry both of us. I think that's legal in Massachusetts.

Here are the girls rowing around the harbor, right in front of the house.

Here's the view from my window this morning:

Oh please, dear landlord sir, please let us spend the rest of our days here. What could you possibly want with this haunted old place. Only we love it enough to be its rightful heirs. We will devote our lives to its upkeep. We will take in orphans and raise them here. We will commit ourselves to the preservation of the house, its beach, its clams and crabs. We will carefully separate our recyclables! PLEASE!!!!!!!

Just this today - a poem by William Butler Yeats. I'm near the ocean, and the poem reminds me of my youth ( I even broke a kneecap once, wild thing that I was - but it was a horse who broke it.)

A Crazed Girl

THAT crazed girl improvising her music.
Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,

No matter what disaster occurred
She stood in desperate music wound,
Wound, wound, and she made in her triumph
Where the bales and the baskets lay
No common intelligible sound
But sang, 'O sea-starved, hungry sea.'

Okay, so we've sorted out the glitches (I think), on my IN HOUSE webpage. So check it out. It's here.

There's a box on the left and if you click on "shows" you should be able to listen to my first two shows. There is also a listing of upcoming shows. So skedaddle on over there for a look see! Seriously, I'm interested in feedback on the website and on the shows themselves so please feel free to comment or email. I can take it.

I’m in a Nantucket rental house, and like any self-respecting Nantucket rental house, this one has, upon its bookshelves, a worn, unabridged, slightly soggy-about-the -edges copy of Moby Dick. I always read my favorite passages from Moby Dick whenever I’m in Nantucket. Being emotionally about twelve years old, I immediately read the sexy, homo-erotic part first – you know the part where Ishmael and his mates are squeezing the whales’ blubber and each other? It’s very beautiful and naughty. If you have a copy of the book, the chapter is called, “A Squeeze of the Hand.” If you’re very good, maybe I’ll excerpt it here in the next couple of days.

In the meantime, let me share a passage that goes with a lovely photo I took today. I have struggled with trying to keep a growing sadness from surfacing, these past weeks. It has partly to do with kids growing up but mostly to do with my own biochemical make-up and general peevishness. So here’s the passage. It’s the “Insular Tahiti” passage that they made you write a paper about in high school.
It's better now that you're older, trust me.

“Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.
Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!”

Well, it's Saturday again, which means that it's time for another episode of my radio show, IN HOUSE. If you're in Northwestern Connecticut you may tune it to WHDD 91.9FM at 2:00 to hear it broadcast. If you're in other parts of the world, you can still hear it at 2:00 by going here and clicking "Listen Live" at 2:00. Otherwise, you may go here, any time after the broadcast to hear the podcast on my website.

This week's interview is with Richard Lambertson and John Truex, the cofounders and owners of LAMBERTSON/TRUEX, the luxury accessories company that makes beautiful handbags, wallets, shoes, etc.. Richard owns a beautiful shop in Warren, CT called PRIVET, and while visiting the shop one day, I happened to see, spread out upon a gorgeous French antique table, a photo layout of their home that was for an upcoming feature of ELLE Decor magazine. I immediately asked Richard if I could interview him for my show, because I am very interested in how two stylish and design-minded people could collaborate on something like a home interior - and not want to throttle each other to death somewhere along the way.

Richard, John and I met in their beautiful old stone house and sipped iced green tea and talked about relationships, design, work, rest and what to do when your partner wants to hang a portrait of Yaz above the fireplace. So join us!

Somebody at WHDD radio goofed and aired the wrong show today so unfortunately you will now have to wait two more weeks to hear the charming Lambertson/Truexes.

It'll be worth the wait, I promise.

The other day I received an email from a reader of my book. I receive many emails from readers and would never print one here without permission from the writer, but I thought this one was intriguing so I asked the writer for permission to post it and she agreed. I'm interested in what you all think. Here it is:

"Dear Ms. Leary, After reading An Innocent, a Broad I rushed to get Out-Takes. I felt that the last part of the book was very emotional. You described how sour marriages can become after a certain amount of time. When that time comes you have to rethink the relationship and decide if you want to continue with the marriage. Thank you for a very moving experience.

One question I would like to ask is why did you use the expression "..his tuxedo trousers and a wife beater..." It was only in the last five years that I heard of a wife beater and was horrified that it was so easily used by women. As a child of the sixties, I would have felt today's women would be more sensitive to that kind of expression. I feel that if you use that expression than you probably see no harm in a person being a wife beater or a woman being beaten. Time passes, but how sad to think we women still suffer from the same beatings and we don't say, "no more."

This writer, who shall remain anonymous, made me think about the fact that the term "wife beater" when describing a man's undershirt, has only been in the lexicon for a short time now. When did people start using this term? And it never occurred to me that it might be sexist - if anything I think it says something about the type of men who originally wore these shirts around with no shirts over them - which would be more of a classist thing. Anyway, I'm interested in your thoughts.

PS, the photo has nothing to do with this blog, it's just my nephew Tommy wading around looking for clams. He'll never be a wife beater, but he'll probably wear one at some point.

I made my son pose with me, as it's almost the end of our last summer before he goes to college. He made me promise to not post it on my blog. SO, as a compromise, I am only posting a piece of his shoulder. It could be anyone, but it's Jack.

I wasn't ready for the sadness that fills me this summer. I can't write about it, even. There is a line from an ee cummings poem that I say over and over in my mnd, every day.

"i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart.)

Well, if you're in Northwestern, CT tomorrow(8/16), tune into WHDD-FM Radio 91.9 at 2:00 to to hear my interview with bestselling author Jane Green, whose wonderful new book The Beach House is currently on the New York Times best seller list. If you're not in Connecticut, you can listen to it after it airs, anytime, by going to my radio page here on my website.

Jane Green is hysterical. I told Jane that it's my dream to someday be in a subway, or walking down a beach and see somebody reading my book. I told Jane that I thought this must happen to her all the time because her books have sold MILLIONS and she admitted that it happens, and when it does, she will sometimes approach the reader to introduce herself, Jane Green, the author. You have to listen to the interview to hear how funny she is describing people's startled responses to this.

That's Jane's Doberman in the photo above. I think he's called Boris, but anyway, I immediately adored him because he's one of those dogs who "smiles" when they greet you. It's not really a smile, the way we humans smile, but more of a grimace. It's a sign of submission, one of our dogs does this, so I recognized it as a friendly greeting but thought of the fear it would strike in the heart of anyone who might dare intrude on that lovely household. That dog has some serious pearly whites!

It's a really fun interview - try to catch it!

Well, we’ve come to the end of our Nantucket visit and, as promised in an earlier blog, I will type an excerpt here from Moby Dick. This excerpt is from the chapter “A Squeeze of the Hand” and while I said before that it is quite sexy, the truth is that I see sexual undertones in almost everything, so don’t worry, I think you can handle it. But this chapter is undeniably sensual – I think you could go as far as saying that it’s erotic – and it’s beautiful, so I present it forthwith:

But first, to bring you up to speed, the whalers on the Pequod have harpooned and killed a whale, and now Ishmael and the others have lashed it to the side of the whaling ship and are relieving it of its blubber or sperm which is placed in vast tubs which need to be stirred to keep from solidifying..

“It [the sperm] had cooled and crystallized to such a degree, that when, with several others, I sat down before a large Constantine’s bath of it, I found it strangely concreted into lumps, here and there rolling about in the liquid part. It was our business to squeeze these lumps back into fluid. A sweet and unctuous duty! No wonder that in old times this sperm was such a favorite cosmetic. Such a clearer! Such a sweetener! Such a delicious mollifier! After having my hand in it for only a few minutes, my fingers felt like eels, and began, as it were, to serpentine and spiralize.

As I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; after the bitter exertion at the windlass; under a blue tranquil sky; the ship under indolent sail; and gliding so serenely along; as I bathed my hands among those soft, gentle globules of infiltrated tissues, woven almost within the hour as they richly broke to my fingers and discharged all their opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as I snuffed up that uncontaminated aroma – literally and truly like the smell of spring violets; I declare to you, that for the time I lived as in a musky meadow; I forgot all about our horrible oath; in that inexpressible sperm, I washed my hands and my heart of it…while bathing in that bath I felt divinely free from all ill-will, or petulance or malice, of any sort whatsoever.

Squeeze! Squeeze! Squeeze! All the morning long; I squeezed that sperm until I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm until a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly feeling did this avocation beget, that at last I was continuously squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally, as much as to say – oh my fellow beings, why should we any longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come! Let us squeeze hands all round; nay let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness."

(I originally posted this tribute to Pongo several months ago. Pongo died today so I am repeating it.)

Allow me to introduce Pongo. Pongo is under-represented on my website because he’s not usually running around in front of the camera. He’s usually asleep someplace.

Pongo is 15 years old and is some kind of terrier/poodle mix. He used to be all black with a white chest. We hooked-up with Pongo in Canada, when he was just a puppy. We were staying in a house in Toronto for several months while Denis was making the movie “The Ref.” Jack was 3 years old, Devin was 1 1/2. I was a little lonely and broody that summer - I think I had just weaned the baby and I wanted another baby, but we had a tough time having the two, and were not going to have any more. For some reason that reality hit home hard those months of “The Ref,” when I found myself, once again, friendless in a strange city, my last baby sauntering around drinking out of a sippy cup. So, one day I saw a sign that said “puppies for sale.” I took the kids to the house, just for a look, and we came home with Pongo.

All summer long, I pushed Dev’s stroller back and forth to the park with Jack running ahead of us and Pongo tucked into a diaper bag that hung from the back of the stroller. Pongo loved his rides and would sit with his scruffy paws and face peering out over the top of the bag. Now, I know I’m partial, but Devin happened to have been a strikingly beautiful baby. She was plump and pink-cheeked with strawberry blonde hair and always a big gummy smile for everybody. So, when all the little old ladies of Cabbagetown (the neighborhood we stayed in) stopped me and said, “How adorable! What a precious baby, how old is she?” I would thank them and say, “She’s fifteen months old!” Then, they would almost invariably say, “And what breed is she?” because they were admiring the puppy, not Devin. The Canadians are like the British that way, from what I have seen – they just love dogs. Kids, not so much.

Pongo was the perfect dog for our young family because he’s small and we lived in New York City, and he had incredible amounts of energy and so did our family. He cured many kids in our building of their fear of dogs, because he always approached children with his head down and tail wagging slowly. He wouldn’t dream of jumping up on a child or growling at a child, let alone nipping one. And he suffered some abuse at their hands, though I tried to prevent this. In those days there were always playdates at our house and sometimes, when I was distracted, a toddler or child would grab Pongo by the whiskers and he soon developed an instinct for recognizing undomesticated children and would slink off to the bedroom when those kids darkened our doorway. But unlike many dogs, he never developed a prejudice against all children and still gets excited when a little one comes to visit.

Pongo’s story is too long to tell here, but I will summarize by saying he’s a classic terrier. He’s made of steel and has always been the boss of our pack, even when it included two boisterous Irish Wolfhounds. He has been run over by cars, not once, but twice (once he was attacking his enemy, the UPS truck and the other time, it pains me to tell you, he laid down behind the wheel of my hybrid car, which he didn’t know was running, and I…I…backed over him). Both times he recovered in record time and though he has suffered a shattered leg and broken pelvis, he takes himself on a little tour of our property each day, and he doesn’t have the slightest limp. And the blessed dog has forgiven me for running him over, because he’s a dog, in the very best sense of the word, which is to say that he lives in the present, lets bygones-be-bygones, and still shows his unwavering devotion by refusing his supper when I'm away, and howling with joy when I return.

Posted on May 4, 2008 5:57 AM | Permalink

"All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old,
The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart,
The heavy steps of a ploughman, splashing the wintry mould,
Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.

The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told;
I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart,
With the earth and the sky and the water, re-made like a casket of gold
For my dreams of your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart."

W.B. Yeats

My daughter took that shot - actually all the shots of flowers on this site.

I have no idea what I’m legally allowed to quote or excerpt here, but I’d like to share the opening paragraphs of Don DeLillo’s White Noise, for those who might be sending their kids off to school this year (or for anyone who has ever gone off to school.) I’m so severely blocked right now, that typing helps, especially typing passages that are so carefully carved and honed by the author that just typing them gives one the sense of feeling the mechanics of the construction of the thing.

Anyway, here it is. If you haven't read White Noise, you're going to want to read it after these paragraphs. Promise.

“The station wagons arrived at noon, a long shining line that coursed through the west campus. In single file they eased around the orange I-beam sculpture and moved toward the dormitories. The roofs of the station wagons were loaded down with carefully secured suitcases full of light and heavy clothing; with boxes of blankets, boots and shoes, stationery and books, sheets, pillows, quilts; with rolled-up rugs and sleeping bags; with bicycles, skis, rucksacks, English and Western saddles, inflated rafts. As cars slowed to a crawl and stopped, students sprang out and raced to the rear doors to begin removing the objects inside; the stereo sets, radios, personal computers; small refrigerators and table ranges; the cartons of phonograph records and cassettes; the hairdryers and styling irons; the tennis rackets, soccer balls, hockey and lacrosse sticks, bows and arrows; the controlled substances, the birth control pills and devices; the junk food still in shopping bags – onion-and-garlic chips, nacho thins, peanut crème patties. Waffelos and Kabooms, fruit chews and toffee popcorn; the Dum-Dum pops, the Mystic Mints.
I’ve witnessed this spectacle every September for twenty-one years. It is a brilliant event, invariably. The students greet each other with comic cries and gestures of sodden collapse. Their summer has been bloated with criminal pleasures, as always. The parents stand sun-dazed near their automobiles, seeing images of themselves in every direction. The conscientious suntans. The well-made faces and wry looks. They feel a sense of renewal, of communal recognition. The women crisp and alert, in diet trim, knowing people’s names. Their husbands content to measure out the time, distant but ungrudging, accomplished in parenthood, something about them suggesting massive insurance coverage. This assembly of station wagons, as much as anything they might do in the course of a year, more than formal liturgies or laws, tells the parents they are a collection of the like-minded and the spiritually akin, a people, a nation.”

Some of you might recall that two weeks ago there was a little mix-up and although I had announced that my IN HOUSE Radio Interview with Richard Lambertson and John Truex was going to air that weekend, it did not air. This was due to a mistake that I am now humble enough to admit was partially my fault. There was some miscommunication about which show should air when.

Anyway, now we're running like a finely tuned instrument and the Lambertson/Truex show will run tomorrow, August 23rd at 2:00 PM. Again, if you're in Northwestern Connecticut, you can hear it as it's broadcast live by listeing to WHDD 91.9 FM on your radio. If you live anywhere else in the world, you can still hear it broadcast live by going to the WHDD 91.9 FM site and clicking "Listen Live." Otherwise, you can go to my IN HOUSE radio page, here, and listen to it anytime afterword.

You're going to love this show. First, these men are charming, funny and smart. Their stunning home is being featured in an upcoming issue of ELLE Decor and you'll feel like you're sitting right there in their beautiful sunroom with us. So tune in!

I have already received several emails (and even a few phone calls) about how much people enjoyed today's IN HOUSE show. I have also received inquiries about their website which I feel like an idiot for not having posted already. So here's the link to their site.

Yesterday I determined that riding my horse Sailor would be a very therapeutic endeavor for me. I’ve been in a little bit of a funk. This was meant to cheer me up. So I went out and collected Sailor from his field and we walked up to the barn - he jigging and prancing with nervous excitement-me wondering what I ever thought was so great about horses anyway. I brushed him off, pulled and fussed with his mane, and then I threw his saddle on his back. It was then that I noticed that the saddle had no stirrup leathers or irons (the things you put your feet in). One of the girls had borrowed them and now they were in my house. If it was any other horse I might have ridden without stirrups but sometime I will share some of Sailor’s zany antics with you. You really want a good foothold on that one. This is a photo of him harassing poor Gabriel:

Anyway, I led Sailor down to the house and then yelled up at Devin’s window so she would bring me the stirrups. She couldn’t hear me. That’s when I had my GREAT IDEA. I would lead Sailor into the house. The stirrups were right in our entrance-way which has a stone floor and very high ceiling. He would just think he was in a barn, I thought, and actually Sailor has very nice manners when you’re not riding him. So I led him up to the stone terrace. He was quite good about the steps to the terrace but when I opened the door to the house and started in, his eyes grew wild, his nostrils flared and he froze. Then he raised his tail and, after trumpeting a flatulent warning, he shot a series of industrial-sized manure patties all over the terrace. Then, being a horse of many talents, he managed to adjust the manure output to a thick spray while at the same time executing a perfect canter pirouette. Anybody who watched the dressage competitions at the Olympics would understand what a complicated maneuver this is for a horse, especially with a twirling, cursing human underfoot. Anyway, by the time we leapt together from the terrace, there was not an inch of it (or me) that wasn’t carpeted in manure.

The horse didn’t want to go in the house. I understood this as clear as day - I can read animal’s minds. He did NOT want to go in the house. All the commotion brought Devin outside and I ended up having a very nice ride. When I was finished, I learned that the dogs had decided to clean up the terrace for me. What they didn’t ingest, they tried to mop up with their fur, the dears.

The next time I need something therapeutic, I’m going to try therapy.

This beautiful image is a still from Milos Forman's film, Loves of a Blonde, which was made in 1965 in Czechoslovakia and was nominated for a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. You might be more familiar with Mr. Forman's American films which include One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ragtime, Amadeus, Hair, The People vs. Larry Flynt among many others.

I know it's only Monday, but I have to start raving about this Saturday's IN HOUSE Radio program, because in it, I interview Milos Forman. The man is so fascinating and sexy and charming (his wife Martina is too young and beautiful to be jealous) that I could listen to him tell stories all day. I visited their home a few weeks ago and we talked about his Bohemian childhood, the loss of his parents to the Nazis, the film school he attended in Prague, the logistics of shooting Cuckoo's Nest in a real mental hospital with real patients as extras ...I could go on and on. TUNE IN! Saturday, August 30th at 2:00(ET). If you live in northwestern CT, it's WHDD 91.9FM. Otherwise, click here to hear it after the broadcast, anytime, anywhere.

It’s that time of year again. I must find myself a dress to wear to an awards show. An awards show with a red carpet. A show with a red carpet along which flocks of beautiful young starlets, models and actresses will daintily tiptoe in their Manolos and their Jimmy Choos, their perfect bodies draped in custom-designed finery, adorned with diamonds and carrying gem-encrusted clutches. Their lithe muscles will be toned to within an inch of perfection. Long of lash and leg., they will smile and wave; their hair swept up into elaborately glamorous cascades of lusciousness, their skin glowing with youth.

I, on the other hand, dear internet, have just had another birthday. It’s the birthday that first makes you closer to fifty than forty. And, I confess that I’ve let myself go a little bit since my book publicity tour. When people stopped taking my picture, I stopped running on that stupid treadmill. And then the summer came with its pies and fried clams and corn on the cob and ice cream and lots of sitting around. So I gained a few. I’m in radio now, I told myself, as I shoveled in the potato salad. I’m a writer who lives in the country, where it’s normal to look robust and healthy, I promised myself as I watched the butter melt into all those delightful nooks and crannys on my Thomas’s.

So today I must go shop for a dress that will somehow lead the eye away from my drooping eyelids, from my flabby upper arms and fleshy midsection. It must lead the eye directly to my legs, which it's true, are the last to go. My legs look pretty good, I have to say. So I'm thinking of wearing a knee length dress instead of a gown to the Emmys. Why should I wear a gown, I'm not nominated for anything. I mean, who do I think I am, Cate Blanchette? A dress is what I'm thinking.

Also, had this brilliant idea of secretly bringing my recording equipment and interviewing the celebs while we're waiting Denis's turn to be interviewed. Then I'll work out some sort of live-feed setup with my blog. So, while I'm standing next to Julia-Louise Dreyfuss, waiting for Ryan Seacrest to interview her and then my husband, I'll chat her up about her dress and stuff and you'll all be able to hear it here first! Denis, unfortunately, has forbade me to do this. "If you get kicked out of the Emmy's," he said, "you're on your own." I am allowed to take pictures, though.

I was out all day and when I arrived home I found bits of white fluff all over our floor. I followed the trail of fluff to the living room where I learned that the girls had decided to destroy their "puppy".

They have been taking turns gently carrying this stuffed animal around for over a year - I actually thought that they sort of thought it was their puppy. I have no idea what made them decide to suddenly commit infanticide. When I removed it, to photograph how they had gnawed off one of its eyes, Daphne made a lunge for the other!

Then, I went to the pantry for a little morsel- you know, like five handfuls of Oreos - and I found this abomination:

One (or more) of my kids had unscrewed the Oreos and scraped out the middle gunk with their teeth AND THEN PUT THE REMAINDERS BACK! They put the half-eaten cookie shells back into the tray and then placed the tray back in the pantry. You're probably thinking, "typical little kids." But my kids are 16 and 18 years old.

Just a reminder to tune in tomorrow afternoon at 2:00 to 91.9 WHDDFM to hear my IN HOUSE radio interview with Academy Award winning director Milos Forman. It's really good, guys. I'm not just saying this because it's my show. Milos is a very, very interesting man with great stories. Just click on my IN HOUSE Radio page if you miss it and you can listen to it anytime.

So I made a few inquiries into the Oreo situation.

It turns out that the culprit (I promised not to name names) did most certainly NOT scrape the stuff from the middle with his/her teeth. This person untwisted the cookie, then married the two halves with the "stuff", thereby making the double-stuff Oreos, quadruple-stuffed. Then he/she thoughtfully returned the blank halves to the cookie tray, in case somebody wanted no-stuff Oreos. At no time, said the perp, did the cookie come into contact with his/her mouth. This person was concerned about waste, the little angel, that's why they didn't throw away the unused halves.

Today, at 2:00 PM(ET) tune into WHDD-91.9FM to listen to my IN HOUSE interview with Milos Forman. You can listen to to it as it's broadcast by clicking on the WHDD link above, or anytime after the interview by clicking here.

Here's a shot of Milos standing next to what appears to be a giant Oscar:

He won the Oscar for this:

And this:

And was robbed for films like this:

And began his career with films like this:

Join my discussion with the engaging and brilliant Mr. Forman this Saturday at 2:00 on IN HOUSE.

The other night I went to see A.R. Gurney’s Off-Broadway play, “Buffalo Gal,” which is a wonderful show about the staging of a production of Anton Checkov’s “The Cherry Orchard.” Well, it’s about much more than that, but as I watched the play I realized, with some degree of shame, that I have never actually read or seen, "The Cherry Orchard", and, as I am planning to interview Mr. Gurney for my radio show, IN HOUSE, I decided I would order a copy of the play from Amazon. I went to the Amazon page and out of curiosity, I scrolled down to the customer reviews.

My novel, Outtakes From a Marriage came out in June, and I admit, I still pay a call to Amazon once or twenty times a day. My book’s Amazon ranking has inevitably climbed and the comments have sort of fizzled out, but I still get a review every now and then, and when I do get a kind review, I'm not exaggerating, my eyes actually well up with tears of gratitude. It blows my mind that people will take time out of their busy lives to praise (or even semi-praise) my book. While my customer reviews have been mostly favorable, I have received a few zingers, like this one:

don’t waste your time or money, (2-stars) June 28, 2008
I bought this book after seeing the author several times (toting around her famous husband on talk shows)
I couldn't have been more bored..ann leary is not funny or smart as the blurbs had led me to believe. The story was tedious (so hard to feel bad for the tragedies that happen to rich white people)

This stung. I wanted to write the reviewer back and ask her if she had seen my starred review from Kirkus (notoriously hard on authors) and my other favorable editorial reviews. I wanted to ask her if she knew how laborious and exhausting it was toting that famous husband here and there. But I didn’t. I just felt awful. I felt sick, really. I want everybody to love me and think I’m perfect - is that too much to ask?.

So, I admit, it cheered me to discover that even our literary giants can be dragged over the coals by Amazon’s discerning judges. Here is a review of Checkov’s "The Cherry Orchard":

A dreadful play (1-star) February 10, 2004
"The Cherry Orchard" is an atrocious play. If we hold this play in high regard, then we dramatist's need to reevaluate our standards. Chekhov wrote a play that will make you not care an inch about the character's or their situation(s). For him to think that this is a comedy makes you wonder if he understood the point he himself was trying to make. The characters are pathetic and they'll make you pity them - not because of their predicaments, but because of whom they are. I do not recommend.

Wow. Harsh. I decided to see what reviewers thought of some of my favorite classics. Here’s what one reader thought of Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises:

A story about immoral alcoholics, July 28, 2008
My main beef with this book was that no one was likable AT ALL. They were all a bunch of morally-bankrupt, selfish and snobby rich Americans who trot all over Europe satisfying their whims and drinking themselves into oblivion, all while imposing their disgusting lives on other people.(Autobiographical?) If you took out every reference to how drunk these people got, this would be a 50-page novella. You might say, "That's what Hemingway was trying to portray". OK, in that sense this was a powerful book because the characters' pathetic lives were so vividly impressed upon my mind. Perhaps. However, I could never recommend this novel for the very subject matter and tone of the novel. Hemingway's writing is, simply put, bizarre. He translates Spanish syntax anad phrasing into English, which results in awkward-sounding phrases and his descriptive abilities are marginal. I would pass on this one.


I usually try not to take pleasure in the misfortune of others, especially dead others, but I couldn’t help feeling a little pleased about Papa Hemingway’s disastrous review. I mean, at least nobody has criticized my syntax and phrasing (yet). Too bad he didn’t live to read this review, perhaps he could have become one of America’s great writers.

I searched for Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and was equally tickled by this stern comeuppance by a disappointed reader :

Good try, but still singular immature approach, June 23, 2008

Granted, Crime and Punishment is considered great literature devoted to the psychology of criminals and their imprisonments within their own guilt. However, the novel is an immature way of stereotyping criminals and simplifying a very complex human puzzle.


My personal favorite, however, was this review of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover, which received one dismal star:

Didn't make it pass the 16th page, July 25, 2008
I wasted my money and time on this book. It was a painful read. It was boring, dry and not very entertaining. How in the world did this book get turned into a movie. I hope the movie is a lot better than the book. I will find out.


How in the world DID Lady Chatterly’s Lover get made into a movie? Clearly some studio nitwit thought this painfully dull read could be transformed into a watchable movie. Why? When there are wonderful books like the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants to adapt?

These reviews are real. I cut and pasted them so all the spelling and grammar mistakes are real too. I guess my point is, if you're ever feeling down about a poor performance review at your job, a bad review of your acting, writing or art, just log onto Amazon - it's truly a jungle out there.

So, he’s at college now. We loaded his stuff into one car, but then there wasn’t room for all of us to fit, so Dev and I took the other car. We stopped at my in-laws in Worcester - Denis’s sister Ann Marie and brother-in-law Neil Coleman’s house - and our nieces were there and Grandma Nora.

We had a delicious brunch. The gorgeous nieces are either thinking about colleges, in college or just finished with college and we talked about all their exciting plans. We watched a few videos of them all when they were babies – all the cousins. Videos of our sweet babies and preschoolers so pleased with themselves because they could count, because they knew their addresses and their ages. One was frolicking in a bath filled with bubbles explaining, with great delight, that she was sick. She was grinning the precious, gap-toothed, guileless grin of a five or six year old. Today she's a college grad who models and is looking for a job in media relations. Her beautiful twin is applying to dental schools.

The moms and the grandma shed a few tears.

We took him to school. We unloaded his stuff. We cracked a few jokes about the over-enthusiastic RAs. We went to the store to get the stuff we forgot to bring. Then it was time to go. Denis was double parked outside the dorm. Dev and I helped him carry his groceries up. It was all there then, the stuff of this boy – his guitar, his sneakers, his sheets and towels and shaving gear, his great sense of humor, his optimism, his grace and kindness, his intuitive wisdom, his big generous heart. It was all there, there was nothing else for us to do, so it was time to go.